Mac Query - Urgent
A quick shout out to any Mac users - and in particular those who would class themselves as experts - I've got a problem with my Mac Book. When you turn it on, it comes alive and goes to the white screen with Apple on it. It shows the dial that indicates something is happening. Then, it turns itself off again, only to restart and got through the whole process again. And again. And again.
If anyone knows why it is doing this (and, more importantly, how to stop it doing this) then please let me know in the comments section. I've suddenly realised just how dependant I am on my computer for... well, just about everything, and the Apple store don't have any appointments until next month and the forums make as much sense to me as Labour economic policy.
Thanks all.
I have, of course, e-mailed the guru himself on all things Apple with this problem.
posted by The Nameless Libertarian @ 11:57 am
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Not a Mac head myself, just done some research..
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1744509&tstart=60
It's not a stuck key, is it?
Also, try booting with the power supply out, and vice versa.
It would seem your RAM is skewered. You should take the machine to your Apple Store.
or it could be a logic board failure (I'm just passing on the comments of a fairly expert friend)
Have you recently allowed it to do a system update? Is it Leopard (10.5.x)? What type of MacBook is it (what model)? Do you have either your original OS disk and/or the little square manual?
Sometimes such behaviour has been linked to a file permissions problem. If you have your original disk you could see a. if it boots off that (which would tend to indicate it's not RAM by the way) and b. once it has booted, go into the Disk Utility and run repair permissions on the startup volume.
Another couple of simple thing you could try are to reset the PRAM - this is one of those Mac tricks that involves you in holding down multiple keycombinations as you power up the machine. In this case you need to hold down Command+Option+P+R all together immediately after pressing the power button (ie before the screen turns gray) and wait till it reboots and makes the startup sound a second time before releasing them.
The other thing you could try is resetting the Power Management Unit (PMU). This differs slightly on different models. In some it is to do with turning on without the battery in and on others there may be a tiny little switch to tweak under the keyboard - as I say - depends what model you have.
Back to the original system disk - you could try botting off that again, running the disk utility again and doing a volume verify this time - do that first so that it doesn't commit any changes in attempting to fix any volume problems straight away. Maybe consult before actually doing a repair if it tells you the volume has lots of problems.
See if any of those do the trick. There are one or two other, more complicated, things to try you might feel able to attempt for yourself if none of these do anything.
NB - don't panic! In my experience, though you may have to go and get some bits of kit (external drive or software tool for example) I don't think I've had a Mac completely degrade and lose everything except in a case where I knew, and could tell by sound, that I had a really badly damaged hard disk, but I suspect you'd have mentioned that if it was squealing like a hamster with its tail caught in its wheel!
Thanks all - and thanks to DK for the e-mail advice. I've got a list of things to try this evening to try to rectify it - and I am glad to hear that the data on it is probably A-Ok. It contains, amongst other things, my first novel. Which probably isn't very good, but having spent ages writing the fucker I'd like a publisher to reject it rather than it being eaten by a fricking computer error.
TNL
Don't worry about your data - just restore from your latest backup.
You do backup your data don't you? Especially things like your first novel.
"You do backup your data don't you? Especially things like your first novel."
Yeah, to a hard drive and also onto a secure online account. But not as often as I should. So whilst a large proportion of the novel still exists, it is in different areas and stored in different ways. Which is a massive headache. Plus, until the ol' computer is back up and running, I can't do much with it. Which is amazingly frsutrating.
TNL
A bit late I know but... you turn your MacBook off?
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